Forgivable Sins (Bellandi Crime Syndicate 2)

Fighting.

Arms wrapped around me. Restraining me.

My throat felt hoarse, my body alive and aware and pained.

Hands grabbed my wrists, gathering up my flailing limbs in a stern grip that I so desperately wanted to shake off.

“No!” I screamed. “Let go!”

“Little Dove.” The soft voice permeated the fog, making me still in the arms that held me. But there was nothing but the black, no sign of my Stallion anywhere I looked. I struggled again, catching my attacker off guard. My nails raked across skin, leaving me with the too familiar feeling of blood and skin under my nails. “Samara!” Lino barked.

My eyes flew open.

Lino hovered over me, trying to restrain me as gently as possible. His eyes were wild as he inspected me. “You’re okay, vita mia. Just a nightmare.” He pulled me into his arms, against his chest, and I let him wrap me up. Let him chase away the lingering edges of the dream.

But the sight of the raised scratches at the base of his neck stared back at me.

They only bled a little, but the knowledge that I’d done that, that I’d hurt him shook me to my core. “You’re okay,” he repeated while I cried into his chest.

“I hurt you,” I whispered, my voice catching and threatening to break.

“It’s just a scratch, Little Dove. It hurt me far more to see you so scared.” I let him tuck me onto my side, his arms wrapping around my middle. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

“I know,” I murmured back. I stayed awake long after his breath evened out in sleep.

I didn’t want to hurt him again.

Thirty-One

Samara

The last thing I wanted to do was face Lino's father, especially not given the sex-fest that our life had become over the past few days. It felt like I could always feel the throb between my legs, the distinct soreness that told me I'd been well and thoroughly fucked. Combined with the way Lino always, always, finishes inside me that sometimes I worry about wearing dresses. After my nightmare, he seemed determined to prove to me that everything was fine—that the scratches weren’t my fault. He used his body to do that, to keep me connected to him when I’d wanted to pull away physically.

"Do you want to skip it?" he asked as we sat in the car outside his father's estate.

"I think that ship sailed around the time we left the house." I laughed at him, because it seemed a little late to be asking that question. Backing out after pulling into the driveway would be viewed as nothing but a coward's move, and if there was anything his father hated, it was a coward.

And the Jews, as he'd pointed out numerous times since finding out my mother was Jewish. For a Roman Catholic who refused to even entertain the idea of his son with anyone but a good Italian girl, I knew I would have been his last choice for a wife for Lino—even if I wasn’t religious myself.

I'd have been lying if I said that didn't entertain me and appeal to me on the darkest levels.

Lino chuckled in return, but the sound was uneasy. I knew these dinners were uncomfortable, even for him. As much as he loved seeing Chiara, spending time in the same room as his father and brother was far from his idea of a good time. I waited in the car, letting him come around to my side and open my door for me like the gentleman he'd always been with me. Thinking of what those hands had done, hands that I hoped stayed clean from the dirtier aspects of the Bellandi business, it always struck me as odd that he could use them so gently and act so kindly. Lino had never, and probably would never, talk to me about the specifics of his family business, and honestly, I didn’t want to know. Some sins were forgivable and then there were some that weren’t. I just hoped his were.

When my door opened, I pivoted and twisted out of the seat. Smoothing the olive-green sweater dress down my thighs, I let Lino take my hand and guide me up to the doors to get out of the cold. Gabriele Bellandi's wife opened the door for us, smiling a thin grin. "Lino," she cooed far too familiarly. Honestly, sometimes I wondered if she hoped to upgrade to the son when Gabriele left her. Where she had once been beautiful, the stress of living a life without love could be seen on her face. It didn't make her look old, just tired. Tired and indifferent.

Unfeeling.

I pitied her some days, but most days I just wanted her to keep her hands off Lino.

It was nice that I would finally have a leg to stand on in that regard. It had never been my place to voice my opinion before, but now as his wife? Absolutely.

She took our coats, passing them off to the butler who glared at her for doing his job. "Samara, lovely to see you, my dear."

"You too, Trista," I echoed. I'd always referred to her as Mrs. Bellandi in the past, but somehow it seemed horribly awkward to call her that name when it was also my name.

Weird.

She didn't seem to notice the difference, too wrapped up in trying to get Lino's attention to pay me any mind even as she spoke. "Everyone else has already arrived. They're in the sitting room. Why don't you go on and join them? I'd just like a word with Lino."